1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image editing apparatus, an image editing method, and a storage medium storing an image editing program. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image editing apparatus and an image editing method for editing plural images and outputting the edited images as a moving image, and relates to a storage medium storing a program for causing a computer to execute the image editing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are a variety of standards for television broadcasting in the world. Typically, the NTSC system is used, for example, in the U.S.A. and Japan, and the PAL system is generally used in Europe. Aside from the television broadcasting standards, there is another moving image recording system such as a film movie system.
Since these standards are different in record image size, frame rate, etc., a moving image must be edited or converted before being output, so as to have an image size, etc. suited to the intended purpose of use. As such a moving image editing technique, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-324453, for example, discloses a technique in which moving image data on movie film or the like is edited and stored for TV broadcast in the NTSC system or the PAL system, whichever is suitable for the intended purpose.
Heretofore, a moving image is usually watched on a TV screen, and therefore a moving image editing apparatus is usually designed to generate a moving image having an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9.
With the popularization of digital cameras and digital video cameras, a moving image has recently been watched not only on a TV but also on a PC. Since an ordinary PC is able to handle moving images of aspect ratios of 4:3, 16:9, 11:9, etc., the moving image aspect ratio is not required to be fixed, unlike in the case of TV.
In addition, for the reason for example that vertically long images rotated 90 degrees can easily be photographed by a digital camera, there has been an increase in the frequency of handling vertically long moving images of aspect ratios of 3:4, 9:16, etc. This results in a situation that image data of various aspect ratios are mixedly present on a PC, which include horizontally long image data of aspect ratios of 4:3, 16:9, 11:9, etc. and vertically long image data of aspect ratios of 3:4, 9:16, 9:11, etc. which are 90-degree rotated compared to the horizontally long image data.
On the other hand, a conventional moving image editing apparatus as disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-324453 is designed to output an image on a TV and therefore cannot meet the situation that various image sizes are mixedly present. In a case for example that vertically long image data is edited into horizontally long image data of aspect ratio of 4:3, black bars appear on the left and right sides of an output image, posing a problem that an appropriate moving image desired by a user cannot be obtained.
By using an arrangement configured to permit the user to set an arbitrary output image size, it may be possible to output a moving image at an aspect ratio at which the black bars around the image are minimized. However, in editing image data of various aspect ratios, the user is required to determine an appropriate aspect ratio for each individual image to be output, which poses a problem that operations become too complicated.
In brief, conventional moving image editing apparatuses cannot provide any guideline for the user to determine what image size (aspect ratio) should be used in editing image data of various aspect ratios currently used on a PC, resulting in a problem that the user may be confused.